


When the Day met the Night

by orphan_account



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - High School, Cecil is a cheerleader, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Smut, Young Cecil, carlos is the best, lots of fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-07 20:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1913169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil's the new little freshman, trying to busy himself with working at the radio station and cheerleading enough to avoid life at home, and trying to ignore his huge crush on the school stud. Carlos is the model student. Captain of the football team, president of the senior class, and all around good guy who finds himself with a sweet, gorgeous, broken 14 year old infatuated with him, who he finds himself falling for in return.<br/>fluff, some angsty bits later, and smut later (of course)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which they meet

“Safe to say you made the team, Carlos?” 

A joke, albeit a terrible one, thrown across the table by the head cheerleader Maureen that Friday night at Big Rico’s.

A joke because Carlos was the perfect example of anyone. Everyone wanted to be like Carlos, star quarterback and captain of the football team, a scientific genius, a future brighter than the overbearing sunshine, with heart-stoppingly perfect hair. So naturally he made the team. 

It was tradition, every fall, the night after tryouts, the senior football players and cheerleaders went to Big Rico’s. Basically everything in Night Vale Academy was an excuse for students to go out to their favorite-well maybe the only-pizza place in town.

Carlos tips his head back into a slight chuckle, pushing his gorgeous hair out of his gorgeous dark face. From the sound of things, the teams were both going to end up the same as last year, all upperclassmen, none of the freshmen or sophmores had been prodigies this year at the football tryouts, like Carlos his freshman year.

However, according to Maureen, there had been one outlier who she was considering.

“I mean, he’s a freshman and we never let freshman on the cheerleading squad right? But like we didn’t have any guys try out this year besides this one. I’m just like not sure because he’s sooo tiny. Like I’m not sure if he’ll even be able to lift Tamika, but we’ll see.” She stirred the straw around in her orange juice (for dinner, Carlos really never understood Maureen’s thing for orange juice.) with her perfectly manicured fingers.

“What’s his name?” Carlos asked.

“Cecil, Cecil Palmer. Tiny little blond kid with glasses. Honestly,” Lowering her voice and leaning across the table “prettier than half the squad, and that voice.”

No one Carlos has met before, but honestly, someone who he’d probably like to…

“Sounds gay to me.” A gloomy drawl thundered from the far end of the booth. The only part of football carlos hated was Steve fucking Carlesburg. The burly 21-year-old had a permanently pissed expression. Which may have had something to do with the fact that this was his 3rd senior year and he still hadn’t been picked as captain of the Night Vale Bucks yet.

Well maybe that’s because you’re an asshole, Steve.

Carlos was doing his best to ignore Steve, because he learned that that was the best thing for a guy to do, the girls on the Cheerleading team were using their extent of power to give him dirty looks, but then one remark wasn’t enough for the night, but he has to go on to say

“guy cheerleaders are so gay. God. I wouldn’t want a homo on the football team. At least you girls don’t have to worry about him staring at your ass…”

“Hey.” Carlos said softly, without looking up from his menu. “Steve. Would you mind shutting the fuck up.”

Everyone in the room froze. When Carlos didn’t raise his voice, it was scary.

Even Steve stuttered out his retort, acting as if he wasn’t terrified.

“A-and what’s it to you, Patel? You wanna guy to smack your ass huh?”

“Don’t speak to me like that, Steve.”

“I-“

“Don’t,” his voice still soft, “or you’re off the team.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Yes I can. Now if you guys don’t mind I don’t think I’m that hungry.”

Carlos dug out three bucks for the chocolate shake and threw it on the table.

“Remember what I said Steve. And everyone here, well they like me more than you, so I’d be careful before talking shit.”

The entire restaurant was silent as Carlos stood up and pushed out the door, the only sound being the tinkling of the little bell on the door when he steps out into the warm September night.

Carlos takes a few confident strides in the direction of his car before ducking against the wall of the Ralph’s. 

“Shiiiiitttt,” What was he thinking. All that. Storming out makes you look weak, not like a good leader. And getting so worked up? Maybe they figured it out. Carlos refused to acknowledge himself as “closeted.” He just hadn’t fallen in love with a guy yet at NVA. So just, if they didn’t need to know he’d rather that they didn’t. especially seeing how steve reacted, he didn’t want to deal with that from everybody. “shitshitshitshitshit”

“Hey, are you okay?” Carlos’ hand was still covering his face as a deep velvety voice rolled up to him. He pushed his hair out of his face out of nervous habit before responding “Yeah, no problem.” And looking up to the owner of the voice.

Oh.

He was shocked such a deep voice could come out of such a tiny body. The boy was at least a foot shorter than carlos, and as narrow as a stick. A pair of thick-rimmed black glasses made his grey eyes look even larger, and, was he wearing a cat sweater? With elbow patches?

Tiny, blond, and too cute to believe, this must have been the freshman Maureen was talking about.

“You’re Cecil Palmer, aren’t you?”

“You know who I am?” the younger boy flushed a bright red and tried to cover up his smile with his hands, hidden in their sleeves. 

“Yeah, Maureen mentioned you. You tried out for cheerleading right? She said you were good.” 

Cecil’s grin split even wider. “Really? Ohmigod did she say if I got on? No don’t tell me. I don’t think you’re allowed. And that would be like cheating.”

“I’m carlos by the way.”

“Oh I know who you are. Everyone does! You’re Carlos Patel. You’re every teacher’s favorite.’

“I doubt that, what are you doing out here alone so late anyways? You should be home, or with friends.”

“Oh,” Cecil looked down at his purple high tops. “Well I don’t really have any friends. I was just walking home.”

“Do you live close by?” He doubted it. There were no houses in the middle of town.

“Well, not that far. Up on the Heights.”

“What? But that’s like a half hour from here!”

“It’s alright, I’m used to the walk.” He flashed a smile up at the older boy, the kind of face Carlos recognized as a “don’t worry about me” covering up a serious “worry about me.”

“You know what, let me drive you home. My car’s just over there.”

“oh, no its fine…” He murmured halfheartedly, then, “you really wouldn’t mind?”

“Of course not!” This kid was just too much.

The two of them walked further down the sidewalk, Carlos occasionally catching the freshman’s big grey eyes on him as they passed under the occasional streetlight.

When they reached the car, he opened the door for cecil, who stammered a thank you.

“So,” Carlos said, swinging the door shut behind him and buckling the seat belt. “What were you walking home from so late?”

Cecil’s eyes just lit up at this and Carlos knew he did something right.

“Oh I got an internship at the Community Radio Station, I mean, technically you can only start at sixteen, but Leonard-the host-said that I was a natural already and I could start now!”

“Wait, how old are you now?” If he wasn’t even 16 yet…

“Fourteen!”

Oh fuck. 

“Ah I see. So you like radio?”

Cecil nodded. “I really want to be a radio show host when I grow up, I think. U dunno I still have time to think about it.” 

“So you’re interning, and on top of that you want to be on the cheerleading squad, too. When will you ever have free time?”

“Well, probably never. But that’s okay. I like to keep busy. Keep, you know, away from home. And speaking of home its this next one. The purple one.”

Carlos made a sharp turn onto the gravel driveway, noting how Cecil looked nervously up at his own house.

“You alright, Cecil?”

“Yes, yeah I’m fine. Um, thanks for driving me home, Carlos. It was really neat.” He smiled up at Carlos.

“Night Cecil, see ya!”

“Yeah! See you around!” Cecil said, opening the door and stepping out into the night.

On his ride home, Carlos contemplated on how much of a creep he felt like. Here he was, senior year, 18, a legal adult, who suddenly found himself burdened with an incredibly incredibly pretty 14 year old.

He was kinda screwed.


	2. In Which They Study

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY! i've been so busy with rehearsals and drivers ed i barely had any time to write this week but i'll be posting more updates i promise! Sorry this chapter is so short!  
> A note on Carlos: So my head canon and how i wrote his race is that he's most definitely Indian on his mom's side (from an indian family I can relate pretty well) but in this AU he never knew his dad. anyways, coolio, love you guys.

“Carlos? Caru chota are you going out?” Mrs. Patel called out from the kitchen over the clanging and hissing of her cooking.  
“Yes mom.” Carlos sighed. He was really getting too old for his mother’s nickname.  
“Where are you going?”  
“out, mom. I’m going to sneak out and party. Maybe join a gang, you never know.”  
“On a Sunday afternoon in Night Vale? Good luck, beta. I hope, at least you’re off to the library at some point.”  
Of course he would. Carlos was perfect. Carlos did everything he was supposed to from everybody. He never let down his mom, his teachers his friends, his teammates. Carlos was the perfect balance of human being on top of it all, but it was hard, and damn, sometimes he just got so tired.  
He tucked his laptop into his backpack and grabbed his car keys before heading out the door.  
Carlos plugged his phone into the car speakers and turned the music up all the way, singing loudly and extremely off key as he backed out of the driveway.  
He couldn’t really place why he was so eager to please people, but he knew what his mom whispered to her friends over tea, its because his father left. Carlos blamed himself, carlos felt the need to make everyone proud of him. If he never let anyone down they’d never leave. But Carlos didn’t think that deeply about himself. All he knew was that he was so fucking sick of being the one trying so hard to make everyone happy.  
He wanted to be the one being looked up to, he wanted to be adored.  
Maybe he wanted to be adored by Cecil Palmer.   
He spent all Saturday trying to decidedly not think about the tiny blond boy with the grey eyes and the gorgeous voice.  
He tried not to think about it because jesus the kid was only 14 years old and so small that Steve Carlesburg could snap him in half.  
But well, maybe that was part of the appeal. Cecil was just so tiny and adorable and vunerable looking. And it was pretty obvious from when he offered him the ride home that he had at least a little crush on Carlos. And the poor kid walking home all alone and when he said “I don’t really have friends.” Carlos just met him and was already so protective of a stranger.  
Carlos pulled the car into the library parking lot, the tires crunching the fallen leaves in the gutter.  
Okay so maybe not his best parking lot. So sue him.  
Actually, It was a pretty distinct possibility. But it was enough of a tiny act of rebellion that satisfied him.  
The mid-september chill was just starting to set in, and a strong gust of wind ruffled his hair just as the glass doors slid open.  
The plan was to get some work done ahead of time for AP chemisty so he didn’t have to worry about it tomorrow, but, well, his plans had a way of not working out.  
Carlos’ footsteps echoed through the nearly empty library to where his favorite spot was, the second floor, right by the window. He sat down with his work and pulled his silver laptop out of his backpack when he looked up to see the boy he was trying so hard not to think about.  
“Hi, uh, Carlos? It’s me! Well, I mean I don’t think you remember but uh I’m-”  
“Cecil, of course. How could I forget? How’s it going?”   
“Awesome, actually.” Cecil said, breathlessly, dropping down to sit in the chair across from him. “I, um, well I made the cheer squad!”  
“Nice!” Carlos leaned over to high-five the younger boy, who flushed bright red and adjusted his glasses.  
“Anyways, well I know you’re really smart, Carlos. And I don’t really, well, okay so I’m prooobably going to fail biology. And you know, you’re like, super smart, so I was wondering if you like weren’t busy or anything if you wanted to maybe…help me with my homework?” Carlos just stared at him as Cecil ducked his head, embarrassed.  
“Well, I hate to dissapoint you, but I don’t think I’m as smart as everyone says I am, but I love science, and I happened to have aced bio my freshman year, so I’d love to help.”  
They spent the afternoon bent over textbooks and notebooks, Carlos drawing diagrams to try and explain better to Cecil, who just didn’t understand. Which was honestly pretty understandable, when he told Carlos his teacher was Mr. McDaniels, the LITERAL five headed dragon. Carlos’ class was where that nickname originated from. McDaniels had five distinct personalities, and every single one of them was awful. Only one teacher had ever disliked him in his 4 years at NVA, well, more specifically, only 2/5ths of a teacher. And it was McDaniels.  
“Are you kidding me?” Cecil said through a deep velvety laugh. “He seriously made you leave class to look at plants because you corrected him?”  
“And it was a lab block, too. I had to look at plants for two hours.”  
Cecil grinned and it was infectious. When Carlos finally looked up from the freshman bio worksheets, he finally noticed how dark the sky had grown outside.  
“Shit, what time is it?” Carlos asked, grabbing his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans.  
“Oh, do you have to leave?” Cecil asked, a faint note of disappointment tingeing his voice.  
“Well, I’m starting to get hungry. And it looks to me like we’ve finished your bio homework. I’m thinking of heading over to that new ice cream place that just opened up.”  
“oh, cool.” Cecil pulled at a loose thread at the bottom of his red and white striped shirt. “See ya tomorrow, then!”  
Carlos could sense how disappointed he sounded. He could tell that Cecil wanted nothing more than to stay all night with him in that library, and honestly, Carlos did too.  
But he knew that he really shouldn’t want to. He knew that he was 18 years old and this kid was barely 14 and not only is that so taboo at NVA for a senior to date a freshman its also kind of illegal probably.  
But what the hell, it wasn’t a date date, it was just ice cream as just friends. Even if your just friend was cute as fuck with the messy blonde hair and splash of freckles just over his nose and that deep voice you’d just love to hear moaning your name-  
Okay carlos, that’s creepy pedo territory again.   
“Well,” Carlos’ words jumped out of his mouth before he could think it through. “would you like to get ice cream with me?”

**Author's Note:**

> ohmigod yay this is my first work ever for the WTNV fandom and i just love HS AUs and younger cecil and adlkjfa;lk I'm just excited to write this :)


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